WildHopHunter
Active Member
SWild Brew Take 1:
This past spring I took my first shot at brewing a wild ale. I took some left over 2nd runnings from a Hefewiezen put it in a jar and left it out on my deck for a couple of days. It fermented so I built up (2) consecutive 1 liter starters. When I tasted the starters they were tart but overall pretty clean and I figured that I might have some wild yeast worthy of brewing with.
I made a 2.5 gallon batch of very bland beer so that I could taste the yeasts contribution to the overall flavor. The base beer consisted of:
2.75 lbs DME
.3 oz Magnum Hops @ 60 min.
I split the beer up in half, pitched the wild yeast into batch 1 and Safale US-05 into batch 2 as a control. After fermentation I ranched and cleaned the wild yeast and put it into storage. After the beer was conditioned I gave it a try. The beer was clear with a brillant color (see attachment) it had an a front end taste of alcohol and a clean finish, it reminded me of drinking Chardonay wine. I let the other bottles sit for some time then tried it again, this time the beer tasted like 1/2 Ale and 1/2 f**ked up Apple Juice. I am assuming I was tasting acedic acid. While it wasn't totally offensive I wouldn't be able to stomach drinking more than one glass.
Wild Brew Take 2:
I was thinking about using this wild yeast again. This time instead of fermenting a batch of beer with solely this wild yeast, I was thinking about starting off with regular brewers yeast (not sure which strain to use yet) then halfway through the fermentation cycle introducing this wild yeast. My goal would be to introduce some the acedic acid flavor but not let it dominate the beer.
Does this sound like a reasonable approach?
Thanks.
This past spring I took my first shot at brewing a wild ale. I took some left over 2nd runnings from a Hefewiezen put it in a jar and left it out on my deck for a couple of days. It fermented so I built up (2) consecutive 1 liter starters. When I tasted the starters they were tart but overall pretty clean and I figured that I might have some wild yeast worthy of brewing with.
I made a 2.5 gallon batch of very bland beer so that I could taste the yeasts contribution to the overall flavor. The base beer consisted of:
2.75 lbs DME
.3 oz Magnum Hops @ 60 min.
I split the beer up in half, pitched the wild yeast into batch 1 and Safale US-05 into batch 2 as a control. After fermentation I ranched and cleaned the wild yeast and put it into storage. After the beer was conditioned I gave it a try. The beer was clear with a brillant color (see attachment) it had an a front end taste of alcohol and a clean finish, it reminded me of drinking Chardonay wine. I let the other bottles sit for some time then tried it again, this time the beer tasted like 1/2 Ale and 1/2 f**ked up Apple Juice. I am assuming I was tasting acedic acid. While it wasn't totally offensive I wouldn't be able to stomach drinking more than one glass.
Wild Brew Take 2:
I was thinking about using this wild yeast again. This time instead of fermenting a batch of beer with solely this wild yeast, I was thinking about starting off with regular brewers yeast (not sure which strain to use yet) then halfway through the fermentation cycle introducing this wild yeast. My goal would be to introduce some the acedic acid flavor but not let it dominate the beer.
Does this sound like a reasonable approach?
Thanks.
